BlackBerry to launch two high-end smartphones next year, cancels plans for entry-level devices

BlackBerry’s original idea was to launch no less than 6 devices, after the Z10 and Q10. That plan was revised to 4 devices — two entry-level and two high-end — and now we have another revision. The new CEO decided that it won’t be chasing folks looking for cheap BlackBerrys and will rather focus all of its attention on users who want to pay a premium for a BlackBerry smartphone.

Only two phones will be released next year, one of which will rock the company’s iconic QWERTY keyboard whereas the other one will be an all-touchscreen device. Or so we think…

The information comes from BlackBerry’s filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, uncovered by the Wall Street Journal. The cancellation of two low-cost devices was apparently needed to “mitigate the identified inventory risk.”

The same media outlet says that it’s still unclear what these two high-end devices will be all about, but we’re guessing the additional details will be revealed shortly. If I had to guess, these two will pack more power under the hood, most likely in the form of a faster quad-core processor. We’ll see…

This comes across as a very lazy article. First of all, Chen (the new CEO) already announced a new low cost device is being produced by Foxcon for a March or April release. Any high end devices will be specifically targeted to enterprise and business customers, not general consumers. A clear strategy is developing and a lot of this was explained last Friday. Again, this is a lazy, BB bashing article (with all due respect).

davidwal

If this article is factual it would be wrong because of the emerging markets Rim have a foot hold in. Maybe the writer meant that it was only going to have two handsets in North America. Anyway this is intomobile so you guess just shoot from the hip like bgr does to rake in views.